Yeah, that twist move is key. I used to fight with the jacket until an old timer on a job site showed me to give it a firm quarter-turn with the stripper after scoring. It breaks the jacket clean every time. My scrap pile of nicked wires went way down after that.

My buddy's dad had a 73 Impala that made it to like 98,000 before the transmission just gave up. The engine still ran fine, but the whole car was rusting apart underneath it. He said the manual was basically a work of fiction by that point. Makes you wonder if they just picked a nice round number and hoped for the best, right?

Ever notice how the places we think are timeless are the ones that show change the clearest? My version of that is watching the hiking trail near my house slowly turn into a mudslide zone, which is less poetic and more just sad.

That paperwork line from @jennifer_west is why I double-check everything now.

Honestly, that "good enough" mindset was exactly where I was at for a long time too. It just seemed like extra fuss for no real gain. Then we had a service call for a flickering light problem that turned out to be a loose neutral in a sub-panel, and the terminal block was pretty scorched. Seeing that damage up close, and the boss explaining the liability, was a real wake-up call. Now the torque driver is just part of the kit, like a tape measure. It feels less like a hassle and more like just doing the job right the first time. Your story about the fire marshal would have made me sweat.